It was hard to say --so hard to say because he couldn't remember anything that had happened. He didn't know what they had done to him, or what had eventually made him give in. He didn't even know how well he was behaving for them; if a memory had floated to the surface in the short time he was here, who was to say that Bella didn't have to keep pressing them back down? It didn't make it much easier though.
"I miss you," Sirius confessed, pulling away so that he could look at James properly, tucking one hand behind James' neck. And it was absurd to say that he missed him, because he was right here.
But they weren't who they had been when they were sixteen -- and maybe that was what Sirius really meant, that he missed who they had been, what they had been, when they had been that age. That summer he had come from -- it had been just them. Sirius tasting freedom for what felt like the first time, and the ease of being with James all the time, a brother declared true. He didn't know any of that anymore.